Sit down a while, we have time.

Have you ever taken the time to think about time? 

I do accept that this might be seen as an odd question but bear with me, you never know it might even get more interesting! I think about it a lot, not just because my allotted amount of time is well past the half way mark now. It's something I've always done. I've never been comfortable with the notion that time is something that we should be so very obsessed with, especially as it is a man made construct. I can understand why, people need order, they need to feel there is a script to their lives.

I wish people could see how robotic it makes them! Let me explain.

Mr Normal sets his alarm so that it wakes him up in time for work. He's thought about that alarm, he's considered how long the three S's take him, dressing, time to eat breakfast, the travel time to work, allowing some leeway for traffic. All this so that he can be in work for a specific time that the company has contracted him to be there. It's a wonder he doesn't 'beep' every time one of these tasks are completed!

For arguments sake, Mr Normal arrives in work at 9am sharp, works until 10.30 and then makes a cuppa, might chat with a few colleagues in the kitchen while it brews, but then he's back at it. He looks at his watch a while later and sees its 12.30. Ting! Lunchtime! He doesn't even stop to consider whether he's actually hungry, it's lunch time, so he should be.

To be honest Mr Normal spends the rest of the day like this. 5pm home, 6.30pm evening meal, 8.30 television, 11pm and he's back in bed, ready to do it all over again tomorrow. 

I could have actually broken that down further, but to be honest Mr Normal was beginning to depress me and I seriously thought I heard him start to squeak. So we'll leave him to oiling his bits.

Now of course we come to the silly bit. I like the silly bits.

The earth travels around the sun every 24 hours. This apparently is fact, although who decided what an hour was and how long an hour was to be able to come up with this piece of wisdom I have no idea. I could google it, but actually I don't much care, time stopped for him several millenia ago I'm sure. 

Our brains don't necessarily conform to all the restrictions of time, which plods along, seconds exactly the same distance apart until they reach their first goal of a minute, which then plods along exactly the same distance apart until they reach the heady heights of an hour. Again and again. Brain is a bit of a rebel sometimes. Brain wakes up and sees a Monday morning. Brains clock starts to slow immediately in reaction. It notices that it's raining.. slower. It remembers that meeting is today that you didn't want to go to... brain is now almost in a coma. You think to yourself "today is going to go on forever!" and while that's an exaggeration on your part is certainly feels like it! 

Brain wakes up another morning. After some scratching of its frontal lobe it realises it's Saturday!! Brain takes on a jaunty little tick now and you get up, humming softly, not even really thinking of the time and do all those Saturday things we enjoy so much. Then, you notice that it's starting to get dark and you frown, confused, so you look, possibly for the first time today at your watch. "Bloody hell I only got up a few hours ago!! How can it be evening already!!!" Inside Brain is having a little tantrum because time went so fast. 

So really, for us, time isn't that consistent. However, left to our own devices, we'd sleep when tired, eat when hungry.. 

Oh I just thought of something! How many of us, at work have said "I have this piece of work to do that's going to take a long while but will be really good, but there's only half an hour left so I'll try and fit it in tomorrow" (and then waste the half hour trying to look busy). If we weren't so tied to the clock, we could do that work, maybe it takes us until 8pm but you're in the zone and it's really good. What if then you could wander in 3 hours late the next morning.. nice lie in there and less stress. Company gets more from you, you get to relax.

So, what can we do with time. Oddly we appear to think:

We can save it

We can spend it
We can waste it
We can steal it
We can borrow it
We can lend it
We can give it
We can take it
We can earn it
We can lose it
We can set it
We can beat it
We can make it

But you know the best thing you can do with it? Live it! In whatever way it's given to you, it is YOURS. 

Afterthought, which should have been a forethought but got lost... sharing time with others is probably the best thing you can do :)